vSwitch0 with two vmnics

[netnameus]

I have two vmnics assigned to my vSwitch0, one on one nic card, one from the other, one to one switch, one to another.

Is it best practice to have one on standby?  Or have them both active?

[Troy_Clavell]

....Is it best practice to have one on standby?  Or have them both active?

I think either way wouldn't be wrong.  We used to go active/standby, but have since gone back to active/active.

[nielse]

May we ask which traffic is running along this vSwitch? MGMT, VMotion, iSCSI,... ?

[aravinds3107]

Are you going to use vSwitch0 for Management, vMotion or VM Network?

We are doing good with both methods..

[netnameus]

Sorry, should have specified.  We're running Management.

[nielse]

Active/standby is fine for management even tho you could use active/active. Don't think there is any (dis)advantage.

[a_p_]

I agree with niels, both configurations will work fine if it's only the management post group which uses the vSwitch. However, to me this looks like a (small) waste of resources/NICs. How does your virtual network setup look like?

André

[nielse]

This is just a small idea but maybe you can use the 2nd NIC more usefull and use it for VMotion or FT?

Basicly something like this:

MGMT: vmnic0 is active, vmnic1 is standby

VMotion/FT: vmnic0 is standby, vmnic1 is active

[aravinds3107]

I have used both methods and it is good,

if you are planning to go for vMotion then would suggest for Active/Standy if you dont have more NIC's and if you cant have dedicated one for vMotion

VMNIC0  - Active VMNIC1 - Standby for Management

VMNIC0 - Stanby VMNIC1- Active for vMotion

Check here for more scenerios

edited by: aravinds3107 - Provided link for sample scenerios

[netnameus]

Attached is my setup.  I already have a nic for vMotion, 2 others for iSCSI traffic.

[aravinds3107]

Look like you are running VNnetwork and Management network in the same interface with Active/Standy which doesnt look good for me.

I would like to have a dedicated physical adapters for Vmnetwork

[a_p_]

From the screen shot it looks like you don't have VLANs in place!? In this case the setup is almost ok although there's no redundancy for vMotion. For vSwitch0 you should definitely set both uplinks to active to have a load balancing (round robin) in place for all the VM's running on this vSwitch.

André

[netnameus]

Would you recommend Management Traffic on it's own nic?  Or can I share it with another network (like the vSwitch3 which is a test iSCSI traffic)?

I only have 8 vmnics, and I need to create a sepearte vmnetwork for test machines, so if I have:

1. 2 vmnic vmnetwork
2. 2 vmnic production iSCSI
3. 2 vmnic vMotion
4. 1 vmnic for test iSCSI
5. 1 vmnic for test vmnetwork

I dont have one/enough for dedicated Management, unless I can share.

Things have been working just fine as they are, but I want to make sure I'm following "best practices".

Thanks for your assistance.

[a_p_]

I often use one vSwitch for Management and vMotion (configuring active/standby on the port groups). However this requires VLANs, since vMotion should run on a separate subnet. You should avoid sharing the iSCSI vSwitch with other traffic.

Do you have the ability to configure VLANs on your physical switches?

André?

[netnameus]

Yes, I can setup VLANs.

[a_p_]

Sounds good. With VLANs in place I would suggest the following setup (with sample VLAN IDs):

vSwitch0 (two uplinks)

pg1: Management (VLAN 100 - Production) - 1. vmnic active, 2. vmnic standby

pg2: vMotion (VLAN 101 - vMotion) - 2. vmnic active, 1. vmnic standby

vSwitch1 (two+ uplinks)

pg1: VM Network Prod (VLAN 100 - Production)

pg2: VM Network Test (VLAN 200 - Test)

vSwitch2 (two uplinks)

iSCSI according to best practices of the storage vendor (either on a separate VLAN or on dedicated swiches)

vSwitch2 (one or two uplinks)

iSCSI test network

André